Which Content Types Get the Most Social Shares

About This Episode:

Steve Rayson, Director at BuzzSumo, joins the Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss how different types of content resonate with different audiences, where visual content is headed, and how important influencers are to building your brand.

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Tweetable Moments

Technology as a Learning Tool

Steve Rayson has always been really interested in the learning processes and how it ties in with technology. In years past, he developed and sold two e-learning companies. When he sold the second, he had to sit out of e-learning for three years because of a requirement in the contract. During that down time, he came across the beta form of an extremely interesting program and decided to join forces with its co-founders.

Today, he is the Director of BuzzSumo, a company that has about 100,000 subscribers to its free services and 1,000 paid members.

BuzzSumo is, at its basic level, a tool to help content marketers and publishers create better content by better understanding what content is resonating in their industries. BuzzSumo tracks what content is being shared and linked to and breaks down that data in a variety of ways. “Put in any topic or any domain, and we’ll show you the most shared content across all of them.”

To Steve, it’s important to see what content is most shared, but it’s even more important to see who did the sharing, how, and then figure out why it got shared. BuzzSumo allows users to do that. So while he’s no longer in the e-learning sphere, Steve is still working with technology that educates. In this case it educates marketers.

Content That Resonates

BuzzSumo has team members in the U.K. (like Steve) and the U.S. From across the pond, Steve doesn’t see a lot of differences in terms of types of content that are shared. There isn’t a great divide between what resonates with American audiences vs. British audiences.

The differences instead lie within different industries and the different purposes of content. For example:

“If you’re looking at fishing and things, they seem to literally be hooked on things like video.”

Quizzes are shared incredibly often across several industries.

Images are particularly good for telling stories and doing comparisons.

Podcasts are consumed during “down time” or when other things are going on.

Video is very engaging, but not scrollable or digestable while focusing on other tasks.

“The key is to do the research for your topic and industry area, because it varies so much from topic to topic as to what works. If you’re in SEO, it’s very different from if you’re in fashion, for example. You have to do the research. But it makes a huge difference, the type of content that you then create for your particular audience.”

The bottom line: There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to content. (highlight to tweet) You need to dig into what’s working in your industry and what types of content your audience is engaging with most actively.

The Big Two:

Steve Rayson

What’s your one tip for becoming a social pro?

“You have to boil it down to being helpful.” (highlight to tweet) You need to be particularly helpful to your social influencers because they’re your key audience, but fundamentally it all comes down to helping people.

Steve read the book “Love is the Killer App” about 12 years ago, which basically says to give away your knowledge because people will reward you for it. “If you help people, they return the love.”

If you could do a Skype call with any person, who would it be?

Haruki Murakami, the Japanese novelist, “because I love his books, but I have no idea what they’re about.”

Steve has read “Norwegian Wood,” “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” and “A Wild Sheep Chase.” Steve would love to spend some time with him to talk about where he got his ideas and to help better understand his work. The author also used to run a jazz club in Tokyo; Steve runs jazz events in London, so they would have a lot to talk about.

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Social Pros is one of the most popular marketing podcasts in the world, and was recently named the best podcast at the Content Marketing Awards. Listen for real insight on the real people doing real work in social media. You get the inside stories and behind-the-scenes secrets about how companies like Ford, Dell, IBM, ESPN and dozens more staff, operate and measure their social media programs.